


Interview with Lyall Lupin on Rising Boggart Infestations

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boggarts, Community: HPFT, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 02:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21067532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: Lyall Lupin is an expert on Non-Human Spirituous Apparitions working with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He talked to The Demiguise, one of our staff reporters, on his work and his recent achievement in Strathtully.For the 2018 HPFT finale, an article in Ravenclaw's newspaper The Augurey.





	Interview with Lyall Lupin on Rising Boggart Infestations

**Author's Note:**

> For the HPFT house cup finale, each house had to create a newspaper based around a certain era. Ravenclaw had the First War with Voldemort era, so this would be the early 1970s, maybe? We all had codenames, hence the staff reporter being "The Demiguise" (it was a newspaper reporting against Voldemort at great risk to those involved, after all).

**The Demiguise: What exactly are Non-Human Spirituous Apparitions, for those of us not up to date with the jargon of the field?**

Lyall Lupin: They used to be called "non-beings", although we changed that term in the recent overhaul of terminology to bring it more in line with current thinking, as some of them -- such as poltergeists -- are very much beings. Anyone who has encountered Peeves, Hogwarts' infamous poltergeist, can attest to that. The most common non-human spirituous apparitions are boggarts, poltergeists and dementors, although there are a few others that are much rarer. 

**TD: Have you seen an increase in these kinds of creatures since the war started?**

LL: Yes -- that's why I was brought on as a specialist. Thankfully we haven't seen too many dementors straying far from Azkaban, but boggarts are getting much harder to get rid of and more plentiful. 

**TD: The Screaming Bogey of Strathtully -- that was a boggart, yes? What was different in that situation from the nuisance that everyone's grandmother has in her attic?**

LL: Your grandmother's boggart may have been living up there for years, depending on how often she ventures into her attic, but it doesn't feed on an appreciable increase in fear, probably because your grandmother knows it's there. We know that boggarts and wizards can live pretty comfortably together for years as long as the wizard is fine with annoying thumps occasionally and, of course, surrenders the use of whatever piece of furniture it's contained in. The problem usually arises if someone sees the boggart, or if they don't know what it is. We all learn in school that boggarts take the form of someone's greatest fear, and that's true for your garden variety boggart, but there comes a point where they've grown so swollen with fear that they become something bigger than any one person's fear. 

That's what happened in Strathtully. There aren't any wizards living there, so I'm not sure what exactly attracted the boggart -- we know they're much more common in wizarding houses, although you see the occasional one in a muggle house as well. The muggles, of course, had no idea what a boggart was and as the legend grew, so did the boggart. At first, the rumours appeared to be fairly muddied, as of course people saw different things, but as the general fear of the area grew -- it had taken up residence in an abandoned house, as they so often do -- the boggart grew stronger. It became able to make sound, which is the point we use when classifying boggarts that distinguishes common boggarts from extreme cases. 

Its presence slipped through the cracks because of the low wizarding presence in the area and by the time it landed on my desk, several people had gone to try to deal with it and failed. Thankfully, even with an extreme boggart like this one, failure isn't physically harmful -- it just means the boggart stays where it is, which is obviously not ideal. Not only do the muggles who live in the area suffer unnecessary stress, but like attracts like, and you can sometimes get huge boggart infestations that create entire "ghost towns", if you will. 

**TD: What did you do to capture it? Did you kill it?**

LL: No, boggarts can't be killed because they're never truly alive in the first place. When you cast _Riddikulus_ on a boggart and it disappears, it's not dead, per se, it's more…Well, it's hard to explain, but its potential is still in the same place -- it just no longer has enough fear to take a form we can see and interact with us and the world around it. Which is not to say that "boggart potential" clusters in certain places -- we don't believe it does, although there's so much we don't know about this kind of metaphysics. It's all around us, but it requires certain conditions to form into a boggart.

Riddikulus becomes ineffective after a certain point, however -- likely the same point when a boggart begins to make sounds. It would take too long to go into exactly what I did, but it involved several shield spells, two potions, and a comically babushka doll-esque set of progressively smaller boxes. In the end, I contained it in a matchbox, which is currently in the vault at the Ministry. We'll probably study it in future, but for now the most important part was getting it out of Strathtully, so I'm pleased to call it a success.

**TD: It certainly sounds like a success. Thank you so much for your time. Before we finish, is there anything you would like to tell our readers about spirituous apparitions or other magical creatures?**

LL: I wouldn't be surprised if we began to see a rise in dementors -- I'm honestly not sure how we haven't already. The Patronus charm is only taught at the NEWT level, so if you didn't take Defence Against the Dark Arts, I'd recommend looking it up and practising it. Even an incorporeal patronus can be the difference between life and…and whatever kind of non-life remains after a dementor has kissed you. And if you encounter a boggart you can't get rid of, please contact the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures -- we do house calls. 


End file.
